France's Left Front hopes to ‘reinvent’ left

Paris, France - The bid of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the French presidency, while ultimately unsuccessful, has given the Left Front, an alliance of far-left parties, massive visibility in France.

The Left Front's candidate won fewer votes than was widely expected, after opinion polls suggested he could sway as many as 16 or 17 per cent of voters.

Nonetheless, with the leftist coalition's candidate's score of 11.1 per cent, placing him in fourth place out of some ten candidates, the far-left has managed to reassert itself and regain a place in the political conversation of the nation.

Al Jazeera's Yasmine Ryan spoke with the Left Front's Raquel Garrido, a longtime ally of Melenchon. Along with Melenchon, Garrido also quit the French Socialist Party in late 2008 to take part in the new movement.